Businesses in the online retail and e-commerce industries face multiple challenges when it comes to supporting their customers. These include high expectations for the speed and convenience of support, demand for better personalization and seamless omnichannel experiences, and having to deal with large volumes of incoming support requests, to name just a few. This is where contact center software solutions can be a valuable tool, helping e-commerce and online retail businesses overcome these challenges.
In this article, we’ve outlined the key benefits of using contact center software and listed the best contact center software for e-commerce to help you make an informed decision.
How E-commerce Businesses Can Benefit from Using Contact Center Software
Before overviewing the best contact center software solutions, let’s take a closer look at how e-commerce businesses can benefit from using them:
Enhanced Customer Support
Today’s consumers increasingly prefer to interact with brands across multiple communication channels. In fact, based on McKinsey research, more than half of consumers engage with three to five channels during each journey they take toward making a purchase or resolving an issue. With contact center software, e-commerce and retail businesses can empower customers to engage with them through multiple support channels, like email, live chat, instant messaging apps, and social media.
24/7 Support Availability
The demand for self-service support is rapidly increasing, with 79% of consumers saying they expect businesses to provide self-service options to help them find answers without having to contact customer support, according to a report from Higher Logic. Additionally, the same report found that 77% view organizations more positively if they offer self-service options, and 84% try to solve issues on their own before they contact support. Contact center software that offers chatbots enables e-commerce businesses to deliver 24/7 support even when agents aren’t available to handle requests immediately.
Increased Customer Satisfaction
According to a Salesforce study, 79% of consumers expect consistent interactions. Yet, 56% often have to repeat or re-explain information to different representatives, negatively impacting CX and customer satisfaction. Omnichannel contact center software solutions that allow you to integrate multiple communications channels and sync information between them can help you deliver a seamless omnichannel experience to your customers, increase customer satisfaction, and ultimately improve loyalty.
Improved Conversions
Contact center software solutions for e-commerce may offer many features and capabilities that can help you reduce cart abandonment, improve conversions, and increase sales. For example, if a customer is about to abandon their shopping cart, the system can trigger a proactive chat notification, offering them help and prompting them to complete their purchase. At the same time, when agents have instant access to customer data and purchase history, they can recommend relevant products during interactions, helping you increase average order value and conversions.
Reduced operational costs
Some of the most advanced contact center software solutions for e-commerce offer AI and automation features that can help you reduce operational costs. For instance, AI-driven chatbots can handle support requests and answer the most common customers’ questions (like checking order statuses or inquiring about return policies), reducing the need for your human agents to answer repetitive questions and freeing them up to focus on revenue-generating tasks.
How to Choose the Best Contact Center Software for E-commerce
While there are many contact center software solutions out there, not all of them are built to suit e-commerce businesses and online retailers. If you’re looking for a contact center solution for your e-commerce business, you might want to consider these features and capabilities:
- Omnichannel integration: The solution’s ability to integrate multiple communication channels and manage communications across all of them from one interface is an important capability to look for, allowing e-commerce businesses to deliver a seamless CX.
- AI chatbots and self-service: With AI chatbots and self-service options, e-commerce businesses can support their customers 24/7 and empower them to find information and resolve issues on their own, reducing the number of incoming inquiries.
- Proactive engagement: Features like proactive chat invitations, product recommendations, outbound SMS, and auto dialing enable e-commerce businesses to proactively engage their customers and improve conversions.
- Reporting and analytics: Reporting and analytics features ensure that you can always stay on top of the efficiency of your operations, measure agent performance, track customer satisfaction, and make more data-driven decisions.
- Integrations with third parties: Another important factor to consider is the software’s ability to integrate with e-commerce systems, CRM solutions, and other third-party systems you are already using to ensure data synchronization across all platforms.
- Customer support: Lastly, when evaluating different contact center software providers, make sure to inquire about each vendor’s customer support options and the responsiveness of their support team. Ideally, you should be able to get customer support 24/7.
Top 5 Best Contact Center Software Solutions for E-commerce Businesses
1. VoiceSpin
VoiceSpin offers call center software and an omnichannel messaging platform that allows you to integrate multiple digital communication channels like email, live chat, SMS, social media, and WhatsApp and manage all customer interactions from a single dashboard. Agents can also leverage AI-generated replies, leave private conversation notes, set up automation rules and campaigns, view AI conversation summaries, and track performance metrics. The platform allows you to integrate an AI chatbot that can be trained to answer your most common questions. Additionally, VoiceSpin integrates with popular CRM systems and productivity apps and offers custom integration options.
Key Features:
- Omnichannel messaging
- AI-generated responses
- AI conversation summary
- AI chatbot integration
- IVR and call routing
- AI auto dialing
- Reporting and analytics
- Workflow automation
Pros: Offers a solid range of AI-powered features and automations
Cons: Custom integration options are only available with the highest-tiered plan
2. Zendesk
Zendesk is a well-known helpdesk ticketing software that allows you to manage customer communications across email, live chat, voice, SMS, social media channels, and instant messaging apps. It enables you to streamline customer communications with skill-based routing and AI-powered automated answers. You can also build your unified knowledge base and a customer portal, empowering your customers to find answers and resolve issues independently. Zendesk is also known for its large library of integration options with business apps.
Key Features:
- Omnichannel ticketing
- Skill-based conversation routing
- Call routing and IVR
- AI automated answers
- AI knowledge management
- Self-service customer portal
- Integrated community forums
- Analytics dashboards
Pros: Offers a rich library of integrations with third-party apps
Cons: Lacks auto dialing and advanced call management features
3. Gorgias
Gorgias offers an omnichannel messaging system, enabling you to support customers across email, live chat, WhatsApp, and social media channels. You can also integrate phone support and SMS as add-ons. What’s distinctive about Gorgias is that it natively integrates with the leading e-commerce platforms like Shopify, Magento, BigCommerce, and WooCommerce – and it allows the platform to automate many actions like checking order statuses, changing shipping addresses, or processing returns. In addition, it integrates with many other third-party tools and business apps.
Key Features:
- Omnichannel messaging
- Rules and rule templates
- Quick responses
- Intent and sentiment detection
- AI chatbot
- Performance statistics
- Onsite campaigns
- Product recommendations
Pros: Native integrations with the most popular e-commerce systems
Cons: Lacks advanced inbound and outbound call management features
4. Talkdesk
Talkdesk is known as a popular contact center software provider that allows you to support customers across voice and digital communication channels like email, SMS, live chat, and social messaging platforms. It also enables you to integrate a self-service chatbot that can answer your most common questions, manage orders, and track shipments, while the co-pilot feature offers real-time assistance to agents by generating quick answers and next-best recommendations. Talkdesk integrates with popular CRM systems, e-commerce platforms, and other third-party apps; however, these aren’t available with the starting plan.
Key Features:
- Inbound call management
- Outbound dialer
- Digital platforms integration
- Real-time dashboards
- Historical reporting and analytics
- Screen recording
- Proactive SMS notifications
- Automation designer
Pros: Offers a range of AI and automation features to streamline operations
Cons: Integrations with third-party systems aren’t available with the lowest-tiered plan
5. LiveAgent
LiveAgent is a helpdesk ticketing system that consolidates email, phone, live chat, social media platforms, and instant messaging apps like WhatsApp and Viber into a single platform. With a wide range of ticket management features, proactive chat notifications, canned responses, and an AI email response generator, LiveAgent is a great tool for managing customer interactions across channels. It also allows you to set up a customer portal with a knowledge base, forum, and FAQs to enable your customers to find answers and resolve issues on their own. The platform can be integrated with CRM systems, e-commerce platforms, and other third-party apps.
Key Features:
- Advanced ticket management
- Proactive chat invitations
- Canned responses
- Video calls
- IVR and call routing
- Reporting and analytics
- Automation rules
- Knowledge base and customer portal
Pros: Offers a free account with basic ticketing features
Cons: Lacks auto dialing features and a chatbot
The Bottomline
With the right contact center software solution, e-commerce and online retail businesses can support their customers across a variety of communication channels, engage them proactively in the most impactful moments, and deliver a seamless customer experience – all leading to improved customer satisfaction, increased conversions, and better customer loyalty.
Disclosure: This is a sponsored guest post by voicespin.
